


just as his father did

by elumish



Series: to relish a love-song [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Female Jason Todd, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24871183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: The apple she’s holding in her hand feels Biblical now, as though she will be cast out for taking it.
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Series: to relish a love-song [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799632
Comments: 26
Kudos: 198





	just as his father did

“There are protein bars in the cabinet to your right.”

Jay almost jumps out of her fucking skin, spinning around to see Mr. Pennyworth standing in the doorway of the kitchen, staring at her. The apple she’s holding in her hand feels Biblical now, as though she will be cast out for taking it.

“I apologize for startling you,” Mr. Pennyworth adds.

“What?” Jay gasps out.

Mr. Pennyworth smiles slightly. “In the cabinet to your right, there are protein bars. They are more nutritious and will last longer than those apples, though you’re welcome to the apples as well.”

Jay swallows and doesn’t move. She can’t tell if this is a test. “You’re not going to yell at me for taking food?”

“I would not think of it,” Mr. Pennyworth says, heading into the kitchen. He walks towards one of the fridges. “Now, what would you like for breakfast?”

Jay stuffs the apple in her bag while he isn’t looking, then shuffles over towards the cabinet she thinks he was referring to. “What do you mean?”

“You are hungry, I assume, given that it is the morning.” He touches the handle to the fridge but doesn’t open it, staring at her. She doesn’t touch the cabinet door. “I am tasked with cooking the food for this household, and as Master Bruce is not awake, I would think that you should have a say over what you eat.”

Jay blinks at him, not really sure what the fuck is going on. He’s asking her what she wants to eat? “I can just eat whatever.”

“And yet, ‘whatever’ is not a meal that I can make.” The word sounds so weird in his fancy-ass British accent that it makes Jay smile. He smiles back at her. “I assure you, I am proficient at making all manner of food, if you were concerned by Master Bruce’s tales of his own inability to cook last night.”

That was definitely not what she’s concerned about, and something about the way Mr. Pennyworth is looking at her makes her feel like she’ll let him down if she doesn’t tell him a food. So she says, “No, I, uh...waffles?” It’s the fanciest breakfast food she can think of, that thing that she and her mom got those couple of special times when they could afford to go to one of the diners right on the outskirts of Park Row, near the nicer part of Gotham.

“I would be pleased to make waffles for you. Do you like berries? I think a nice salad of fresh fruit would be lovely on the side.”

“I, um.” She doesn’t think she’s ever eaten a berry in her life. “Sure?”

“Wonderful.” He nods towards the cabinet. “You have the right place for the protein bars.”

Then he opens the fridge and starts rifling through it, and she takes the opportunity to yank open the cabinet door and start looking around for protein bars. There’s an empty box, and she starts pulling a couple out from it, carefully not making too much noise so he can’t tell that she’s taking more than one.

But then he says, “Ah,” and she freezes, arm still raised towards the cabinet, protein bars clutched in both hands. The cabinet door is blocking her view of him, and she doesn’t think he’s come any closer, but she can’t see, she can’t--

“Sorry, I’ll--”

“No need to take from the box that is already open,” he says, and he doesn’t sound any closer, and she stands very very still. “There should be a full box in there. You are welcome to the entirety of it; it should help protect the bars from being crushed in your bag.”

Jay can’t believe he would let her take an entire box of protein bars, but she doesn’t want to argue it and she could really use the bars, so she jams the two bars she had already pulled out back into their box and snatches the closed box out of the cabinet, stuffing it in her bag. Then she closes the cabinet up, moving so she can see what Mr. Pennyworth is doing.

He’s standing at the counter, measuring out ingredients into a bowl, and Jay feels kind of obnoxious just standing there when he’s making food, so she asks, “Can I help?”

“That would be wonderful,” Mr. Pennyworth says. “There are a few containers of berries on the counter beside me, and a colander in the cabinet just below them. If you could put the berries into the colander and rinse them, I would appreciate it.”

“Sure,” Jay says, even though she’s not thrilled with the idea of getting that close to him. “But I don’t, uh…. What’s a colander?”

Mr. Pennyworth glances at her, then says, “Ah. My apologies.” He brushes his hands off, then opens the cabinet next to his knees and pulls out a pasta strainer. He puts it down on the counter.

Jay feels her face get hot at not knowing something that she probably definitely should have, even if she’s not sure why he couldn’t just call it a pasta trainer, but she shuffles over to him and grabs the strainer and sticks it in the sink, then grabs the berries and moves them over to another part of the giant counter.

It’s a relief when she’s back out of grabbing distance from him.

There’s a lot of berries here, so she asks, “How much?”

“All of the blueberries and raspberries and half of the strawberries,” he says, and even though that seems like way too much, she obligingly dumps all of that in the strainer, then runs water over it and watches it drain out of all of the little holes.

“Thank you,” Mr. Pennyworth says, even though she basically didn’t do anything.

“Can I do anything else to help?” Jay asks.

“Simply keep me company, if you will. I am always happy to have a conversation partner in the morning.” Mr. Pennyworth starts beating what looks like egg whites in a small bowl with a weird wire thing that she thinks is called a whisk. “Could you tell me anything about your family?”

Jay really doesn’t want to talk about her family, but she also doesn’t want to piss off the guy making her food, so she hunches her shoulders and says, “No family.”

“Everybody has some family. Though if you spawned from an egg, I would love to hear that story as well.”

Jay can’t help but smile at that, just a little, and she relaxes enough to lean against the counter and say, “No egg, at least as far as I know.” She chews on her bottom lip, trying to figure out how much is too much to say. She doesn’t want them to be able to figure out who she is, because then they won’t know to place her in one of those group homes for fucked up kids. “Willis got locked up years ago. He’s going to die there, one way or another. If he hasn’t already.”

“Willis?” Mr. Pennyworth asks. He sounds so neutral that it’s hard to feel like he’s judging her, and that makes it easier to keep talking.

So she says, “My dickhead dad. He used to beat the shit out of my mom, so it was better once he was locked up.” Even though they didn’t have enough money, and they had even less once her mom started doing drugs. It was still better with just her and her mom.

“I see.” Mr. Pennyworth pours the fluffy egg whites into the bowl with other mixed ingredients and starts folding it in with a spatula. 

She doesn’t think she’s ever made a single meal that has involved so many different pieces of kitchen equipment. She doesn’t think their kitchen even  _ had _ most of these. They had like one sharp-ish knife and a plastic cutting board and a pot and a really dented pan from when Willis smashed it on the counter that one time.

“I am sorry that you went through that,” Mr. Pennyworth says.

Jay shrugs, really not wanting to talk about it. “Not your fault.”

“Nonetheless, I am sorry. Will you tell me about your mother?”

That thought still hurts, and she hunches in on herself and shakes her head and says, “No.”

“Perhaps at a later date, then.” Mr. Pennyworth pours the batter into a waffle iron, and it hisses and sizzles as he closes it. “This will take a few minutes, and then you can eat.” At that, he starts cutting up strawberries by taking the green bits off and then cutting them in half, which Jay could have done, she knows how to cut things in half, but maybe he doesn’t want her to have a knife.

She can’t really blame him.

He puts all of the fruit together in a big glass bowl and mixes it together with a spoon, and then the waffle iron makes a shrill noise that almost makes her jump out of her chair. He opens it up and pulls the waffle out with a fork and puts it on a plate, and then he spoons some berries into a small bowl and places both down in front of her. Next he gives her a fork and a knife and a spoon.

Once that’s all done, he says, “Eat.”

The waffle has convenient little grid lines splitting it in quarters, so she cuts it in half and pushes one half away towards Mr. Pennyworth. And then she puts the fork and knife down and picks up her half and bites off part of it.

It’s so good. It’s crispy but somehow also soft, and when she puts some berries in one of the little indents and bites that whole bit off it’s  _ so good _ .

Diner waffles are never that good. And  _ fruit _ . It’s so much better than canned peaches.

It takes her almost no time to get through her half of the waffle, and then she pushes the plate over towards Mr. Pennyworth.

“Is it not to your liking?” Mr. Pennyworth asks, looking at the plate. “I would be happy to make you something else, if you’d prefer.

“It’s really good,” she says, sneaking another blueberry with her fingers from the bowl. She tried to leave half of them for him, too, but she thinks she’s eaten more than half.

One bushy eyebrow goes up. “Are you feeling unwell, then? You did not finish it.”

“Oh.” Jay blinks down at the plate. “No, that’s your half, right?” He hadn’t made another one, so she was assuming it was like when her mom only got one and they would split it.

Mr. Pennyworth frowns, and then he says, “No, the entire waffle is for you. And I would be happy to make another, if you are still hungry.”

“But you haven’t--” She was in the kitchen before him, so she would have seen if he had eaten. “You haven’t eaten, have you?” Mr. Wayne had seemed to get along with him, but maybe she misunderstood last night. “Does Mr. Wayne not let you eat?”

She’s definitely not staying any longer than she has to if he doesn’t let his employee eat food. Because then he’ll definitely not let her eat much food.

Mr. Pennyworth blinks at her, looking really confused, and then he says, “Oh, dear. I eat breakfast after my morning duties; it has been my habit since long before Master Bruce had any ability to give me orders. I simply do not enjoy eating early in the morning. So please, eat as much food as you would like. Though I would appreciate it if you use your fork and knife as intended.”

Jay doesn’t need to be told twice; she pulls the plat back towards her, spinning it around so the waffle is closer to her. She does use the fork and knife this time, even though she would rather just pick it up and stuff it all in her mouth at once.

“You’re really good at cooking,” she tells him around a mouthful of waffle. But then she adds, “Sorry you had to make food for me.”

Mr. Pennyworth smiles at her from where he’s washing dishes by hand, as though he doesn’t have what looks like a perfectly good dishwasher five feet away from him. “I am glad you are enjoying the food. Believe me, it is no hardship to cook for you. I have missed having a boy in the household. Master Bruce tends to be satisfied with a cup of coffee in the morning.”

Jay eats a few more berries with her fingers, because they keep falling off her spoon, and then she tells him, “He must be crazy not to want to eat your food.”

\--

Bruce Wayne doesn’t get up for hours, and then he wanders into the kitchen in a full freaking suit and no shoes, staring down at his phone. He looks up to smile at Jay, then says, “Just a cup of coffee, Alfred.”

“Now that there is a growing boy back in the house,” Mr. Pennyworth says reproachfully, even as he starts pouring a cup of coffee, “you should set a good example by eating actual food in the morning.”

Bruce Wayne looks up from his phone again to say, “A piece of toast, then.”

“You will have waffles and berries,” Mr. Pennyworth says. “It would do you good to eat some fruit every once in a while.”

Bruce Wayne makes a face at Jay, like he’s he’s trying to complain about what Mr. Pennyworth is saying, but Jay would eat fruit every day if she could. 

Finally, after Mr. Pennyworth puts a pile with a whole stack of waffles in front of Bruce Wayne, Bruce Wayne puts his phone down and looks at Jay and says, “My priority right now is to make sure that you end up somewhere where you’ll be safe and well taken care of.”

“You do know that there aren’t places like that in Gotham, right?” She’s pretty sure Bruce Wayne has no reason to know how fucked up DCFS is, but she’s not going to stay wherever they stick her, and she needs to make sure they don’t stick her somewhere for ‘troubled kids’ because everyone knows those are harder to run away from.

“I have a social worker who I trust, one who helped me when I took Dick in. She’ll make sure that you end up somewhere good.” All the thoughts Jay has about that must show on her face, because he adds, “You can stay here for as long as you need so we can make sure that you end up in the right place.”

She can’t figure out if he’s a weirdo who just likes kids too much and is trying to lull her into a sense of complacency or if he’s just trying to replace the kid of his who is suspiciously elsewhere.

Maybe he thinks helping kids will make people forget that he’s a drunk playboy, even though it hasn’t worked so far.

“She’s going to come over soon,” Bruce Wayne says, “and we’ll go from there. How does that sound to you?”

It sounds like shit to Jay, but she shrugs and mutters, “Yeah, sure.”

“Great.” Bruce Wayne beams at her, showing all of his very white teeth. “When did you wake up?”

“This morning,” Jay says. She’s not even really trying to be a smartass, not really. It’s not like there are a ton of clocks everywhere, and she doesn’t have a watch, so she just kind of goes by morning, afternoon, evening, night most of the time. It’s really all that matters.

Bruce Wayne laughs like she said the funniest thing ever. “And you got enough to eat?”

Jay is  _ still _ full, so she nods. 

“I’m glad.”

“ _ Eat _ , Master Bruce,” Mr. Pennyworth says, sounding annoyed. Jay didn’t know people were allowed to sound like that at their employers.

But Bruce Wayne just makes a face and starts eating his waffles, looking grumpier than Jay thought it was possible for someone to look while eating waffles. 

Mr. Pennyworth is making even more food, and he looks like he’s doing about four hundred things at once, and Jay still feels bad for sitting there and watching an old guy do all these things, so she stands up and asks, maybe a little aggressively, “Can I do something?”

She also maybe doesn’t want to think about the social worker coming, and sitting there next to Bruce Wayne isn’t helping with that. 

Mr. Pennyworth looks at her, and then he asks, “Have you ever made bread?”

Is that a trick question? “You can make bread?”

“Of course.” He starts pulling out more ingredients and putting them on  _ more _ counter space, and while he’s doing that he says, “If you will wash your hands, please. You will be kneading the dough by hand.”

She feels like she should be offended that he thinks her hands aren’t clean enough, but he sounds so bland that she can’t make herself feel like he’s talking about her specifically, so she goes and washes her hands.

Making bread is nuts. They use yeast that they have to dissolve in water first with sugar, and then they mix it with flour and more sugar and salt, and she feels like the bread is going to end up really sweet, and then he porous the whole blob out onto the counter with some more flour and tells her to knead it.

Which apparently means pushing the dough around and then folding it in half and then pushing it again, and it starts off weird and wet but the more she does it the more it gets smooth and cohesive, and it feels nice under her fingers, and she gets to push out all of her agitation and fear and anger into the squishy blob of bread dough.

Which means she’s almost relaxed when Mr. Pennyworth announces, “The social worker is here.”

At which point every muscle in Jay’s body tenses up, and she jams her fingers deep in the dough and grits her teeth.

“I will show her to the sitting room,” Mr. Pennyworth says. “Master Jay, if you will wash your hands before you come join us.”

Jay doesn’t want to, but she pulls her hands out of the dough anyway and says, “I don’t know where that is.”

“I will escort you there once you have washed your hands,” Mr. Pennyworth says. “Master Bruce, if you will.”

Bruce Wayne leaves, and then Jay is alone in the kitchen.

She thinks about

_ Grabbing a knife jumping out the window stealing some food leaving _

But instead she washes her hands and picks up her backpack from where she had it on the floor leaning against her leg and waits for Mr. Pennyworth to come back.

Which doesn’t take very long, and then he starts to lead her through the hallway, and as they walk he says, “Master Bruce will ensure that you will be safe.”

Jay really fucking doubts that, but she just holds on to the strap of her backpack and doesn’t say anything.

The drawing room is another one of what seem to be endless fancy rooms in the manor, and Mr. Wayne is lounging on one couch and a woman is sitting on another, and Jay walks over and sits down in the chair that’s furthest from both of them.

The woman is really pretty, with dark skin and cornrows pulled back into a ponytail, and when she says, “You must be Jay,” Jay can hear a little bit of Crime Row at the back of her accent.

It makes Jay trust her a little more. Nobody fakes an accent like that.

“My name is Imani Brown,” she says. “I’m here, first and foremost, for you: my job is to make sure you end up somewhere safe. I’ll do my best to get it right the first time, but if I don’t, I will make sure you don’t stay there. First, to do that, I’m going to need your full name, so we can see if you have any relatives you can stay with.”

“No,” Jay says. Like hell is she giving them her full name, because the second she does that they’ll have her full name they’ll have her DCFS record and they’ll stick her in the shittiest place they can manage.

“If there’s a reason you don’t want to stay with your family--”

“I’m not telling you my fucking name,” Jay snaps. 

“Watch your language,” Bruce Wayne says.

“It’s okay,” Imani says. “Jay, I need to be honest with you: there aren’t many people who want to take in an unidentified teenage boy, and most of them are people I wouldn’t feel comfortable placing you with. If you don’t give me your name, you’ll likely end up in a group home for a while.”

Those are probably the easiest places to run away from, so Jay just shrugs.

“I have a thought,” Bruce Wayne says, and Jay’s first thought is that from everything she’s heard Bruce Wayne doesn’t think. But then he continues, “I’m willing to take Jay in until we can figure out a better option.”

Is that a fucking joke?

Imani apparently thinks so too, because she says, “Mr. Wayne--”

“I am qualified to help raise a teenage boy,” Bruce Wayne says, and he’s smiling, but it’s the same kind of smile as the laugh after she said he sounded like Batman. “And I would prefer Jay not end up in a group home.”

Imani stares at him for a second, and then she looks at Jay and asks, “Are you okay with that?”

Jay has no fucking clue. “I. Um.”

“Would you mind stepping out for a moment,” Bruce Wayne says to Imani, and it should be a question but he says it like it’s a order.

Imani is still looking at Jay. “Do you want me to stay?”

Jay has so far beyond knowing what’s going on, so she shrugs and says, “Whatever.”

“I’ll go wait in the hallway,” Imani says, and then she stands and leaves.

Once the door is shut, Bruce says, “I don’t expect you would stay very long at any group home you were placed at.”

Jay doesn’t say anything. She’s not going to confirm that for him, because then he’ll tell Imani and make it harder for her manage that.

“I know I might not be the ideal option,” Bruce says. “Dick isn’t around, so there wouldn’t be anyone else your age around, and it’s a big house to rattle around in. But if you stay here, I promise you’ll be safe and nobody will hurt you.”

“Why the fuck do you want me to live with you?”

Bruce Wayne smiles a little. “I don’t want you to end up back on the street, and I don’t want you to end up hurt. This seems like a pretty good compromise to me.”

It still sounds fucking crazy to Jay, and the problem with staying here is that it’ll be harder for her to get back to the main part of Gotham, because everything is so far away out here.

“As an incentive,” Bruce Wayne adds, “If you stay here until Imani finds a more permanent place for you to live, I’ll give you a hundred dollars for every day you stayed here.”

Jay chokes on her own spit. “Like hell you will.”

Bruce Wayne raises and eyebrow, and then he sticks his hand in his pants pocket and fishes around in it a bit, and then he comes out with a hundred fucking dollar bill, which he folds in half and puts on the table in front of him. “That’s yours, for staying last night.” He leans back, gesturing at it with his chin. “You can take it.”

Jay waits a second for him to say it’s a joke and take the hundred back, and then she darts forward and grabs it before he can change his mind. She’s never held this much money before in her life, but she doesn’t take too long to look at it, instead putting it in the safest inner part of her backpack, the part that has a zipper inside the zippered pocket.

“I could give you a hundred dollars from now until the day you turn eighteen, and it wouldn’t make a dent in the amount of money I have.”

“How do I know you won’t just not give it to me, if I stay?”

“I’ll put it in a trust,” he tells her. “I’ll bring a lawyer in to explain it all to you, and we can put in whatever safeguards that you want, so you know that you’ll get the money as long as you stay.”

“And if you don’t stay?”

Bruce Wayne shrugs. “I’ll find something else to do with it.”

This still sounds too good to be true, but even a few hundred dollars is way too much to pass up, so finally Jay says, “Yeah. Okay. Sure.”

“Great.” Bruce Wayne smiles at her again. “I’ll go get Ms. Brown, and we can tell her the good news.”

**Author's Note:**

> Is this entire series just an excuse to write about food as a love language? Perhaps.
> 
> Be well, be safe, stay as healthy as you can. This too shall pass.


End file.
